Leland Grove - Leland grove is a tiny town of 1,500 incorporated in the 1950s on the outskirts of Springfield. The town has the highest per capita income of any city outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. Leland Grove’s mayor, Jill Egizii, also volunteers at the Sangamon County Animal Control Center. Egizii has been suspended from her volunteer job for two months.

An incident with a kennel card occurred when a new volunteer, a 16-year-old girl, attempted to take a dog named Alpha for a walk. This occurred Aug. 24, a Monday, after the dog had been inside his kennel for a day-and-a-half and was excited to finally get outside.In his excitement, Alpha scratched the girl, and the girl told staff members. Staff members then wrote on the kennel card that Alpha had scratched his walker.“I told them that if you are going to put that on his kennel card, you might as well put him to sleep because nobody is going to look at this dog with that on there… I get scratched all the time because these dogs are excited,” Egizii said.

County officials said Egizii removed the kennel card that mentioned the scratching incident and replaced it with one that did not mention the scratching.

The new card had Alpha’s name and a note that said, “Good Boy.” In the section for “energy level,” the box for “high” was marked. “It’s a different way to say the same thing, really, but in a more positive light. It allows the dog to be pulled out so that somebody could look at him for a potential forever home,” Egizii said.